Teo Macero vs. George Martin: Two Legendary Producers

Introduction: The Unsung Heroes of Music

Producers work behind the scenes and are the unsung heroes of music. While some producers receive public notoriety — like Brian Eno and George Martin — others like Teo Macero remain known mainly to music scholars and serious audiophiles. In 2008, when Macero died, The New York Times ran an obituary with the tagline: "Teo Macero, 82, Record Producer," as if readers would need that crucial bit of vocational data. Indeed, Macero is best known for his work on Miles Davis's masterpieces Kind of Blue and Bitches Brew. He was also a composer whose approach to music took into account the big picture rather than attention to minute detail.

Macero was ahead of his time. He incorporated electronic effects and electronic media in ways that made Bitches Brew as momentous and groundbreaking an album as it is. The embrace of new technology is therefore a hallmark of Macero's style. He "used techniques partly inspired by composers like Edgard Varèse, who had been using tape-editing and electronic effects to help shape the music," and turned those techniques into his own by applying them to jazz (Ratliff, 2008). Jazz had previously been squarely within the acoustic domain. Even after Macero's influence, jazz returned to its trademark minimalist post-production. As Ratliff (2008) puts it, "Such techniques were then new to jazz and have largely remained separate from it since."

What Macero did with Bitches Brew and other Miles Davis recordings was to elevate them to a new dimension. Macero was experimental at a time when listening audiences hungered for avant-garde sound, which is why his productions proved both trendy and timeless. In fact, Macero is now credited with fomenting a creative lineage of producers who also rely heavily on electronics in the post-production process — a lineage that includes luminaries like Brian Eno, the German band Can, and Radiohead (Ratliff, 2008). While the electronic, heady sounds of Radiohead might seem completely natural and appropriate for that genre, the application of electronic elements to traditional jazz was far less obvious.

It might seem counterintuitive to compare Teo Macero with Sir George Martin. After all, the latter has been dubbed the "fifth Beatle," placing Martin firmly in the realm of popular music and culture rather than jazz and the avant-garde. Martin enjoys a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a result; Macero does not. Both had prolific and eclectic careers, but they occupied completely different realms of music. However, the two share more in common than is immediately apparent. "Macero has often been compared to Beatles producer Sir George Martin in his influence on the history of jazz music recording" ("Teo Macero," n.d.).

Biographical Profile: Teo Macero

Teo Macero was born Attilio Joseph Macero on October 30, 1925, in Glens Falls, New York. Macero served in the United States Navy before pursuing a music career at a prestigious conservatory, from which he graduated in 1953 with the added honor of the BMI Student Composers Award ("Teo Macero," n.d.). Armed with both Bachelor's and Master's degrees in composition, Macero went on to work with jazz almost exclusively, having formed his school's first official jazz group ("Teo Macero," n.d.).

Macero's introduction to and appreciation of jazz stemmed in no small part from the fact that his parents owned a nightclub called Macero's Tavern. The tavern hosted African-American jazz musicians whom young Teo heard throughout his childhood. By the time Teo was eight years old, he had learned how to play the saxophone and begun writing music ("Teo Macero," n.d.). He formed a school dance band at age thirteen, and when he entered the Navy, music continued to permeate his life — he joined the Navy band.

Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland sponsored Macero for not one but two Guggenheim Fellowships. He taught music at the New York Institute for the Blind and performed live at Carnegie Hall. During the 1950s, Macero also began working closely with bassist Charles Mingus as both a saxophone player and a composer ("Teo Macero," n.d.). After working with Mingus, Macero went on to collaborate with hundreds of musicians, including Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Leonard Bernstein, André Kostelanetz, Dave Brubeck, Count Basie, Paul Horn, Tony Bennett, Mahalia Jackson, Simon and Garfunkel, Gato Barbieri, Ramsey Lewis, and Robert Palmer ("Teo Macero," n.d.).

Most of Macero's career was spent with Columbia Records. He began working at Columbia as an editor and producer in 1957, and during that tenure produced more than 3,000 albums ("Teo Macero," n.d.). His production roster is supplemented by an impressive compositional portfolio: "He has written numerous compositions for the concert hall, over 50 film scores, and many television productions. He has written at least one opera and over 50 ballets" ("Teo Macero," n.d.). Macero also produced musical scores for Broadway productions including Bye Bye Birdie and A Chorus Line, and produced Simon and Garfunkel's soundtrack for the film The Graduate. He remained creative until the very end of his life, willing to experiment. He "recently worked with DJ Logic and Vernon Reid on new recordings, and he has his own music company, TeoMusic, which has released a number of albums of an interesting and varied nature" ("Teo Macero," n.d.).

Biographical Profile: Sir George Martin

George Henry Martin was born in Highbury, North London on January 3, 1926, making him a near exact contemporary of Teo Macero. Like Macero, Martin started playing music at a young age. Martin's parents were not, however, musicians or club owners as Macero's were. Martin's father was a carpenter, and his family was working class.

Martin started with the piano — an expensive instrument for a working-class family, which underscores both his enthusiasm and his talent. During his formal music education, Martin later incorporated the oboe into his musical repertoire. Just as Macero had been inspired by the jazz musicians playing in his parents' club, Martin was "enraptured" by the BBC Symphony Orchestra when it came to his school with Sir Adrian Boult (Martin, 2012). Martin's love of classical music remained a thread throughout his eclectic career.

At age fifteen, Martin started a band with classmates called The Four Tune Tellers ("Sir George Martin: Biography," n.d.). Both Macero and Martin seem to have cultivated a keen interest in composition over the mechanics of playing throughout their careers. Also like Macero, Martin served in the Navy for a time, although Martin appears not to have pursued his musical interests during his service with Britain's Fleet Air Arm — only before and after.

Between 1947 and 1950, George Martin attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. After graduation, he landed his first jobs with the BBC and EMI. He was placed in charge of the EMI Parlophone label in 1955 as a young executive producer. Unlike Macero, Martin did not exclusively produce jazz. Martin focused on classical and baroque recordings and, later, comedy and novelty productions — including recordings by the Goons, Rolf Harris, Flanders and Swann, and, most successfully, the Beyond the Fringe show, starring Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller ("George Martin," n.d.). Martin did not leave jazz by the wayside, however; during his work with classical and comedy recordings, he also produced several jazz records.

As head of the Parlophone label, Martin earned $3,000 per year "with no royalties on his productions or bonuses based on the performance of his work or signings" ("Sir George Martin: Biography," n.d.). The musicians he worked with were not nearly as renowned as those on American record labels — until Martin met the Beatles. Some of the artists he worked with at Parlophone included Cleo Laine, Johnny Dankworth, Humphrey Lyttelton, and Stan Getz ("Sir George Martin: Biography," n.d.). Martin stopped producing for Parlophone in 1965, largely because of the time-consuming nature of working with the prolific Beatles.

Like Macero, Martin was becoming drawn to the possibilities that electronic production offered. In 1962, Martin produced an electronic dance single entitled "Time Beat," released under his pseudonym Ray Cathode and recorded at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop ("George Martin," n.d.). Not long thereafter, Martin pursued music production in earnest, actively seeking out bands to work with and manage — which is how he found the Beatles.

From the first meeting between George Martin, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney, the relationship between Martin and the Beatles became one of the most fruitful in pop music history. Just as Macero had done with jazz, Martin infused creative electronic elements into studio recordings while also incorporating elements from his classical training into the Beatles' signature sound. The results included clever arrangements such as the string quartet in "Yesterday," "Eleanor Rigby," "A Day in the Life," and "Penny Lane." Unique post-production effects were also used on "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite." Both the Yellow Submarine and Abbey Road albums were Martin productions, bearing the producer's signature creative orchestration and inventive sonic mash-ups.

Martin never surrendered his first love of composition, especially classical composition. His work with the foremost pop music group of the 1960s enabled him to fuse classical with pop elements. He composed the musical scores for several Beatles films, including Yellow Submarine. In 1973, after the dissolution of the Beatles, Martin composed the musical score for the James Bond film Live and Let Die, with Paul and Linda McCartney recording the title track. After the Beatles broke up, Martin continued to work with the individual group members as both producer and composer. The ultimate fusion of Martin's work as a classical composer, musical producer, and "fifth Beatle" was the 2006 remix of Beatles songs for Cirque du Soleil: the Love album.

Martin's musical talents were not limited to Beatlemania. His foray into jazz is most notable in his production of the Mahavishnu Orchestra's fusion music. Martin also produced seven of America's albums, two of Jeff Beck's, and albums by Gary Brooker (of Procol Harum), Neil Sedaka, Jimmy Webb, UFO, Cheap Trick, Ultravox, and Kenny Rogers (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2010). Martin was knighted in 1996.